The author is a poet, counsellor, and occasional scholar-in-residence. Musings on everything from advaita ("non-dualism") to sustainable living, interspersed with poems. Thanks to Zvi Jaspan of Kibbutz Tzora for the name for this blog.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Australia @ Christmas time

What a nauseating deluge of commodificationwhat a povery of thought and feelingmagazines and newspapers bursting with huge cataloguesof things and things and thingsto ram down each others stockings like Foie Gras feeddown the throats of geese

what a meaningless orgy of evasionas if buying what is shiny today and discarded tomorrowcould somehow substitute for husbands givingtheir attention to wivesparents giving their attention to childrenemployees giving their attention to what they were hired to dopeople giving attention to their environments

this is not givingthis is running as far from givingas matter will allow

but at least mercy is shownto millions of pigs and sheepand cowswho receive their Christmas giftas a bolt in the brain or a knife at the throatand do not have to witnessthe drunks and the glass woundsand the emergency roomsand the desperation inducedby the gap betweenthe adverts and the reality

"Everyone's got to serve someone"

a "hogeh deyot" - Hebrew for someone who thinks a lot about things that are not directly related to the daily round. I worships two G?ds, that are probably one and the same - creativity and balance. Sat. Chit. Ananda. Gila Rina Ditza ve Chedva. Adoshem Hu Elokim. Veshal-om shanti shanti.